Learn Swimming Front Crawl
Slide and Glide Drill

The slide and glide drill is the last drill in the series to learn the freestyle stroke, also known as front crawl. It will teach you how to stroke and roll to the side without an intermediary catchup position.

Swimming Drill Video

Drill Instructions

The drill is in fact an extension of the advanced slide on your side drill:

• Push off the wall.
• Place yourself in a 90° side-lying position.
• Head is aligned with the spine and rotated so that the face emerges from the water.
• Lower arm is extended to the front, parallel to the water surface or slightly lower.
• Upper arm is lying at the side.
• Kick with a supple flutter kick.

Once you are stable and balanced in this position, do the following:

• Rotate the head down so that you look at the bottom of the pool.
• The rest of the body doesn't rotate and keeps its position.

Once you are stable again, finish the cycle:

• Start the recovery of the upper arm, with the hand sliding along the side of the body, then past the head.
• When the recovering hand passes the head, it pierces the water and extends to the front.
• At the same time, the other arm starts to stroke back and brushes past the chest and hips.
• The whole body rotates like a log until the recovering arm is completely extended to the front, the body is again in a 90° side-lying position but on the other side, and the stroking arm has finished its stroke and lies flat on the side.
• The head has followed along the rotation and is now again emerged with the face looking up.

You take again some time to rebalance, then restart the cycle to the other side and so on.

Swimming Drill Tips

• Only start to pull and roll all at once to the side when the recovering arm passes the head. This teaches you the correct timing for front-quadrant swimming.
• Once you are comfortable with this drill, start to alternate drill and swim lengths. Try to maintain the same smooth and relaxed sensation of the drill length during the swim length.
• It might be that you need to mentally switch from drill length to swim length when you alternate them. In that case, stop at the lane end for a few seconds and rehearse what you want to do during the next length.

Conclusion

That's it, this was the last drill to learn swimming freestyle. You should now be able to swim with a relaxed and effective freestyle stroke. Refresh these drills regularly, for example at the beginning of a swim session to get into the groove.

Now that you have learnt swimming the front crawl, you might now want to learn how to swim the other strokes.

Related Pages

• Previous: Swimming Drills - Advanced Slide On Your Side